"Encumbered" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... cold through being exposed to a cold draft, through wet clothing, etc., is not necessarily followed by more serious consequences. If the system is not too much encumbered with morbid matter and if kidneys and intestines are in fairly good working order, these organs will take care of the extra amount of waste and morbid materials in place of the temporarily inactive skin and eliminate them without difficulty. The greater the vitality and the more normal the composition ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... mill! Balls pierced it in every part. Half of the roof was carried away. Two walls were battered down. But it was on the side of the Morelle that the destruction was most lamentable. The ivy, torn from the tottering edifice, hung like rags; the river was encumbered with wrecks of all kinds, and through a breach was visible Francoise's chamber with its bed, the white curtains of which were carefully closed. Shot followed shot; the old wheel received two balls and gave vent to an agonizing groan; the buckets were borne off by the current; the framework ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... power of Truth has not been appreciated, and just in proportion as we reverence the individual, and trust the unaided potency of Truth, we shall find it useless. What organization in the world's history has not encumbered the unfettered action of those who created it? Indeed, has not been used as ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... and a gold coin in exchange for a mere ham. By this time her total cash resources had grown to nearly five thousand francs. It was astounding. And the reserves in the cellar were still considerable, and the sack of flour that encumbered the kitchen was still more than half full. The death of the faithful charwoman, when she heard of it, produced but little effect on Sophia, who was so overworked and so completely absorbed in her own affairs that she had no nervous energy to spare for sentimental regrets. ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... the matter had been less easily found than a louse in the filthy beard of a Capuchin friar. But a man well learned and well informed, through having left his footprint in many monasteries, consumed much midnight oil, and manured his brain with many a volume —himself more encumbered with pieces, dyptic fragments, boxes, charters, and registers concerning the history of Touraine than is a gleaner with stalks of straw in the month of August—this man, old, infirm, and gouty, who had been drinking ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... were scarcely able to move at all, I felt it necessary to retrace our steps as speedily as possible, to try to save the lives of the animals we had with us. In order that we might effect this and be encumbered by no unnecessary articles, I concealed, and left among some bushes, all our baggage, pack-saddles, etc. After passing about five miles beyond the sand-drifts where I had seen the cockatoos and pigeons, one of the horses became completely exhausted and could not proceed any ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... take—which must be sufficient so that in case of the lengthening of the voyage, for any cause which may arise, the men may not perish for lack of them. Great care should be taken that they be not overloaded or encumbered, so as to put them in danger of wreck or some misfortune; on the contrary, they should be lightly laden, and in such manner as will secure their safety against storms or enemies that may be encountered. The tonnage which, as aforesaid, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, - Volume XIII., 1604-1605 • Ed. by Blair and Robertson
... she holds it the duty of an economist to buy; in consequence of this maxim, we are encumbered on every side with useless lumber. The servants can scarcely creep to their beds through the chests and boxes that surround them. The carpenter is employed once a week in building closets, fixing cupboards, and fastening shelves; and my house has ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... indeed, a certain advantage in this weight, as it made the shock with which the knight on horseback encountered his enemy in the charge so much the more heavy and overpowering; but if he were by any accident to lose his seat and fall to the ground, he was generally so encumbered by his armor that he could only partially raise himself therefrom. He was thus compelled to lie almost helpless until his enemy came to kill him, or his squire or some other friend came to ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... bullets were coming in a tempest; the rooms were encumbered with the wounded, some of whom were whirling round like drunken men, and clutching at the furniture; the walls and floor were bespattered with blood; corpses lay across the doorways; the lieutenant had had his arm shattered ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... stop a moment and snatch some berries from one of the vines with which many of the trees were encumbered, the Very Young Man did the same. He found the berries sweet and palatable, and he ate a quantity. Then discovering he was hungry, he took some crackers from his belt and ate them walking along. The Doctor and the Big Business Man ate also, ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... them out of debt. It would certainly be an advantage for all parties concerned if the fishermen would agree to be paid by a price on delivery, as is done on the Fifeshire coast; but from the fact of their being so heavily in debt, and so much encumbered in these northern places, they require some advance before they are able to go to the fishing at all; and it is only perhaps one half of the fishermen who are in an ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... Dunn Brown had been left to keep watch over the bullocks and ponies, while Dan was busy in his kitchen, as he called it, roughly built up in the shelter of one of the walls. Before a second whistle rang out everyone was returning at the double, or by as near an approach thereto as the rock and stone encumbered ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... hatchets in hand, advanced along the shattered deck. Cases of all sorts encumbered it, and, as they had been but a very short time in the water, their contents were ...
— The Secret of the Island • W.H.G. Kingston (translation from Jules Verne)
... aspect. On the Para, the infinitely diversified trees seem to rise directly out of the water, the forest-frontage is covered with greenery, and wears a placid aspect; while the shores of the main Amazon are encumbered with fallen trunks, and are fringed with a belt of broad-leaved grasses."—Naturalist on the ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... Panting and exhausted (for mind you, if you haven't been in a fool boat like that for years, rowing takes it out of you), the rowers stuck to their task. They threw the ballast over and chucked into the water the heavy cork jackets and lifebelts that encumbered their movements. There was no thought of turning back. They were nearer to ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... heard and read so much concerning the desolation and elemental upheavals and violent waters of the upper valley of the Snake, that I dared not attempt to return in that direction. The route by the Madison Range, encumbered by the single obstruction of the mountain barrier, was much the shortest, and so, most unwisely as will hereafter appear, I ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... she was gettin' on," by a series of formal afternoon calls. No such fashionable sight ever had been witnessed in the town as Mrs. Symes presented when, in a pair of white kid gloves and a veil, she picked her way with ostentatious daintiness across several vacant lots still encumbered with cactus and sagebrush, to the log residence of Mr. and ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... not liked to trouble you with such sordid matters," rejoined his parent, with sarcasm. "I presume, however, that you are acquainted with the main facts. I succeeded to this estate encumbered with a mortgage, created by your grandfather, an extravagant and unbusiness-like man. That mortgage I looked to your mother's fortune to pay off, but other calls made this impossible. For instance, the sea-wall here ...
— Stella Fregelius • H. Rider Haggard
... by sending to a distant city, succeeded in procuring a raw Irish maid-of-all-work, a creature of immense bone and muscle, but of heavy, unawakened brain. In one fortnight she established such a reign of Chaos and old Night in the kitchen and through the house that her mistress, a delicate woman, encumbered with the care of young children, began seriously to think that she made more work each day than she performed, and dismissed her. What was now to be done? Fortunately, the daughter of a neighboring ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... were made in England, in former times, against picked shoes, short doublets, and long coats. The dandies of ancient days wore the beaks or points of their shoes so long, that they encumbered themselves in their walking, and were forced to tie them up to their knees; the fine gentlemen fastened theirs with chains of silver, or silver gilt, and others with laces. This ridiculous custom was in vogue from the year 1382; but ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... the better able to defend himself;—a strong man with nothing but his fists, or a paralytic cripple encumbered with a sword which he cannot lift? Such, we believe, is the difference between Denmark and some new republics in which the constitutional forms of the United States ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 2 (of 4) - Contributions To The Edinburgh Review • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... active life it entails slowness of decision and procrastination, failure "to get there." I have no doubt that much contemporary writing suffers delay from a like morbid dread as to possibility of error. The aim to be thus both accurate and clear often encumbered my sentences. My cautious mind strove to introduce between the same two periods every qualification, whether in abatement or enforcement of the leading idea or statement. This in many cases meant an accumulation of clauses, over which I exercised my ingenuity and lavished my time so to arrange ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... car, which renders the management of the balloon easy, had not then been invented; a circular gallery surrounded the lower part of the aerostat. The two aeronauts stationed themselves at the extremities of this gallery. The damp straw with which it was filled encumbered their movements. A chafing-dish was suspended beneath the orifice of the balloon; when the voyagers wished to ascend, they threw, with a long fork, straw upon this brazier, at the risk of burning the machine, and the air, growing warmer, gave ...
— A Voyage in a Balloon (1852) • Jules Verne
... the chairs were encumbered with wearing apparel, the articles which Mme. Blanche used daily—her watch, her purse, and several bunches of keys—were lying upon the ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... plunderers, indifferently mounted and armed with every variety of weapon; and the rest slaves, attendants and camp-followers, mounted on tattus or wild ponies and keeping up with the Luhbar in the best manner they could. They were encumbered neither by tents nor baggage; each horseman carried a few cakes of bread for his own subsistence and some feeds of grain for his horse. They advanced at the rapid rate of forty or fifty miles a day, neither turning to the right nor ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... find the ground so bad and encumbered with rough stones," I said, "that it would ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... hears from Colonel Hardin. The redoubtable old Indian fighter who was saved to die in the service of his country, has pushed on and captured the two villages observed from High Gap, and is encumbered with many prisoners. He now discovers a stronger village farther to the left, and proceeds to attack. This latter village is probably in the neighborhood of the present site of Granville, and opposite the point where the Riviere De Bois Rouge, or Indian creek, enters the Wabash. Scott at ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... disposition which hath descended from your ancestors, those infernal huntsmen, as you have described them, to love falsehood rather than truth; and I no longer marvel that your spirits become high and exalted, and vent themselves in verse and in tunes, when you approach to the places encumbered by the haunting of evil spirits, which must excite in you that joyous feeling which others experience when approaching the land of their ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... Southern sunlight like an exotic of the Saharan country. It is quite the most foreign and African-looking jumble of architectural forms to be seen in France. It took us three hours to cross the river and stroll about its debris-encumbered streets and get back again and start on our way northward, but it was worth the time ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... foot in black velvet, took his place below the First President in the great hall of the Augustine monastery, where the young King was to hold his Bed of Justice, the ordinary place of meeting being still encumbered with the costly preparations which had been made for the state-reception of the Queen. This ceremonial was essential to the legal tenure of the regency by his mother, which required the ratification of the sovereign; and his assent in the presence of ...
— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe
... evidently led to the roof. They had noticed it as they followed their landlady up the stairs. Willie led the way through it and the boys found themselves on the roof, which, like the roofs of most city houses, was flat. Like its neighbors, also, this roof was encumbered with a number of long, wire clothes-lines, but the boys found nothing that suggested an aerial to them. Puzzled, they ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... his place of business. He had forbidden any inquiries to be made outside the pale till later in the day; it would be but to betray to the enemy Joseph's breach of the law. In the meantime, perhaps, the wanderer would return. Manasseh's establishment was in the Piazza Giudea. Numerous shops encumbered the approaches, mainly devoted to the sale of cast-off raiment, the traffic in new things being prohibited to Jews by Papal Bull, but anything second-hand might be had here from the rough costume of a shepherd of Abruzzo to the faded fripperies of a gentleman of the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... surprise, the gentleman before me gave me no opportunity to test my resolution. No sooner did he perceive me than he made a hurried gesture that I did not at that moment understand; and, just lifting his hat in courteous farewell, vanished from my sight in the thick bushes which at that place encumbered the grounds. ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... ask you something about the effect of labor-saving inventions upon a class of so-called capitalists who made up the greater half of the American people—I mean the farmers. In so far as they owned their farms and tools, however encumbered by debts and mortgages, they were technically capitalists, although themselves quite as pitiable victims of the capitalists as were the proletarian artisans. The agricultural labor-saving inventions of the nineteenth century ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... frequently interrupted. He had been Lord Dunleigh's steward in better days, as his father had been to the old lord, and was bound to the family by the closest ties of interest and affection. When the estates became so encumbered that either an immediate change or a catastrophe was inevitable, he had been taken into his master's confidence concerning the plan which had first been proposed in jest, and afterwards ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... out through the vines which still encumbered the porch, and was taking my first steps down the walk, when some impulse made me turn and glance up at one of ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... some vegetation in places; here and there a small yew tree, which reminded us of churchyards and the dark plumes on funeral coaches; but there were also many varieties of ferns in the fissures in the rocks. When we neared the top, encumbered as we were with umbrellas, walking-sticks, and bags, we had to assist each other from one elevation to another, one climbing up first and the other handing the luggage to him, and we were very pleased when we emerged ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... went on. It came to Spurlock suddenly that if something did not react in his favour inside of five minutes, he was done. In a side-glance—for the floor was variously encumbered with overturned objects—he saw one of his paper weights, a coloured glass ball such as McClintock used in trade. As the Wastrel rushed, Spurlock sidestepped, swept the ball into his hand, set himself and threw it. If the Wastrel had not turned the instant he did, the ball would have missed ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... salutary lessons, which their condition might afford, is lost to the world. Neither are such scenes of real misery courted by mankind; the nearest semblances which they can bear being in the sentimentalities of the stage, encumbered as they often are by overstrained fiction and caricature. On the contrary, a walk through those receptacles of human woe, and the little histories of their inmates, will often furnish as many lessons ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 10, No. 277, October 13, 1827 • Various
... errors of her life, and was now to glorify the ignominy of her death. This project, after much deliberation, he relinquished, as too difficult. By a new mode of management, much of the homeliness and rude horror, that defaced and encumbered the reality, is thrown away. The Dauphin is not here a voluptuous weakling, nor is his court the centre of vice and cruelty and imbecility: the misery of the time is touched but lightly, and the Maid of ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... tree as the sugar is from the maple tree. It is taken from the trunk in the shape of a very thick milky fluid, and it is said that no other vital fluid, whether in animal or in plant, contains so much solid material within it; and it is a matter of surprise that the sap, thus encumbered, can circulate through all the delicate vessels of the tree. Tropical heat is required to form the caoutchouc; for when the tree is cultivated in hothouses, the substance of the sap is quite different. The full-grown trees ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... yard from the ground, and I got out somehow, encumbered in my shawl, which a grateful reader had crocheted for me. She had, however, to help me in again directly I was out, for, between us, we had forgotten the stable key, which was underneath ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... Reformers took instant possession of the hall. It was found in a very dirty and disorderly condition, encumbered with benches, scaffoldings, stakes, gibbets, and all the machinery used for public executions upon the market-place. A vast body of men went to work with a will; scrubbing, cleaning, whitewashing, and removing all the foul lumber of the hall; singing in chorus, as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... horrors; who Italian wives didst not behold By ruffian troops embraced; Nor cities plundered, fields laid waste By hostile spear, and foreign rage; Nor works divine of genius borne away In sad captivity, beyond the Alps, The roads encumbered with the precious prey; Nor foreign rulers' insolence and pride; Nor didst insulting voices hear, Amidst the sound of chains and whips, The sacred name of Liberty deride. Who suffers not? Oh! at these wretches' hands, ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... opinion, in a country where a sneer might send the offender to Siberia. The wretchedly relaxed religion of the Greek church, where a trivial penance atones for every thing, and ceremonial takes the place of morals, as it inevitably does wherever a religion is encumbered with unnecessary forms, could be no restraint on the conduct of a daring and imperious woman. By some of that easy casuistry which reconciles the powerful to vice, she had fully convinced herself that she ought, for the sake of her throne, never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... this lodge, if you glanced inside, where it was encumbered with furniture till no room was left, you could always make out a fat woman, motionless, very swarthy, in whose arms reposed a pale weakling of a child, long and thin, like a white earthworm. It seemed that above the window, instead ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... expected, he found the Chief Inspector awaiting him. The death of Madame Duclos had added still another serious complication to the many with which this difficult affair was already encumbered, and he was anxious to talk over the matter with one who had been on the spot and upon whose impressions he consequently ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... same central position which the Colosseum occupied in Rome. Of the circus nothing now remains but the chord of the semicircle, or, to express it more familiarly, the straight line of the D figure, in which it was built. As far as I could guess, from pacing the length of this enormous wall, encumbered and buttressed as it was by dirty shops, it is in length nearly or quite a hundred yards, and of a height proportionate. The point of view from which it appears to the most advantage, is on the road to Avignon, about ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... think I have said. She was engaged to marry a certain Mr Pat Kilcullin, who I heard was a gentleman of property some distance further west; and that he had a real castle and a good estate, somewhat encumbered to be sure, as became his old family and position. How many hundreds or thousands a year it might once have produced I do not know; but as he and his father before him, and his grandfather, and other remote ancestors had generally taken care to spend double their income, it could not but ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... time augmented his uneasiness. I had the good fortune to obtain the confidence of this worthy man. He complained bitterly of the imperfect manner in which the fleet had been prepared for sea; of the encumbered state of the ships of the line and frigates, and especially of the 'Orient'; of the great number of transports; of the bad Outfit of all the ships and the weakness of their crews. He assured me that it required no little courage to ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... the spell which had been on us both at that time in Venice had been nothing but the spell and tremendous incantation of the Thought of Death. The dreary city with its decaying palaces and great tomb-encumbered churches had really seemed, in those dark and desolate weeks, to be the home and metropolis of the great King of Terrors; and the services at dawn and twilight, with their prayers for the Dead, and funereal candles, had been the chanted ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... no regular road now that they were beyond the Roman dominions, where directly a country was conquered the new owners set themselves to form a level military road, but simply a rough, rock-encumbered track. ...
— Marcus: the Young Centurion • George Manville Fenn
... misconceptions. This became subsequently still more inevitable when his own old errors met him as the watchwords of a party within the Christian Church itself, against which he had to wage a long and relentless war. Though this conflict forced his views into the clearest expression, it encumbered them with references to feelings and beliefs which are now dead to the interest of mankind. But, in spite of these drawbacks, the Gospel of Paul remains a possession of incalculable value to the human race. Its searching investigation ...
— The Life of St. Paul • James Stalker
... how small a beam of light would act; as this bears on light serving as a guide to seedlings whilst they emerge through fissured or encumbered ground. A pot with ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... all. I have said to myself—'The old man has worked very hard, and he certainly gave me a better bringing up than I had a right to expect; let him enjoy the fruits of his toil in peace, and in his own way.—I even gave up my mother's money to you. I began encumbered with debt, and bore all the burdens that you put upon me without a murmur. Well, harassed for debts that were not of my making, with no bread in the house, and my feet held to the flames, I have found out the secret. I have struggled ...
— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac
... left to struggle in death-agony while the regiments rallied. The body was quivering yet as they came on again; and John, as he ran by, shouted to a sergeant to drag it off: for his own left hand hung powerless, and the colours encumbered his right. In front of him repeated charges had broken a sort of pathway through the abattis, swept indeed by an enfilading fire from two angles of the breastwork, slippery with blood and hampered with corpses; but the grape-shot which had accounted ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... force, chastised the temerity and insolence of Tarleton, General Davidson was actively engaged in assembling the militia of his district to aid General Greene in impeding the advance of the British army in pursuit of General Morgan, encumbered with more than five hundred prisoners, on his way to Virginia. General Greene, accompanied by two or three attendants, left his camp near the Cheraws, rode rapidly through the country, and met General Morgan ...
— Sketches of Western North Carolina, Historical and Biographical • C. L. Hunter
... resumed their walk, and presently the path grew steeper. Some of it was rough-hewn in the rock, and encumbered by roots of trees. Anderson held out a helping hand; her fingers slipped willingly into it; her light weight hung upon him, and every step was to him a ...
— Lady Merton, Colonist • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... his own physician. Another great authority was called in, at the same time, by the urgent request of my own medical man. These distinguished persons held more than one privy council, before they would consent to give a positive opinion. It was an evasive opinion (encumbered with hard words of Greek and Roman origin) when it was at last pronounced. I waited until they had taken their leave, and then appealed to my own doctor. "What do these men really think?" I asked. "Shall ...
— Little Novels • Wilkie Collins
... lavished upon his high-born wife all the pomp and luxury he considered fitting to the position she had left for him, Felicita's own tastes and habits were simple. Her father, Lord Riversford, had been but a poor baron with an encumbered estate, and his only child had been brought up in no extravagant ways. Now that she had to earn most of the income of the household, for herself she had very few personal expenses to curtail. Thanks to Madame and Phebe, the house was ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... depressed by a sudden misadventure. Dr. Upround's opinion in favor of Robin did not go very far with him; for he looked upon the rector as a man who knew more of divine than of human nature. But that fault could scarcely be found with a woman; or at any rate with a widow encumbered with a large family hanging upon the dry breast of the government. And though Mr. Mordacks did not invade the cottage quite so soon as he should have done, if guided by strict business, he thought himself bound to get over that reluctance, and ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... Gothic Cathedrals of Europe. The wealth lavished on the smaller chapels and shrines is prodigious, and the high altar, inclosed within a gilded railing fifty feet high, is probably the most enormous mass of wood-carving in existence. The Cathedral, in fact, is encumbered with its riches. While they bewilder you as monuments of human labor and patience, they detract from the grand simplicity of the building. The great nave, on each side of the transept, is quite blocked up, so that the choir and magnificent royal chapel behind it have ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... these distracting doubts, however, the departure was resolved upon. Mirabeau had many interviews with the Count Fersen upon the subject. It was his great object to prevent the flight from being encumbered. But the King would not be persuaded to separate himself from the Queen and the rest of the family, and entrusted the project to too many advisers. Had he been guided by Fersen only, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... boy on the farm we never asked ourselves questions about the stones and rocks that encumbered the land—whence they came, or what the agency was that brought them. The farmers believed the land was created just as we saw it—stones, boulders, soil, gravel-pits, hills, mountains, and all—and doubtless wished in their hearts that the Creator had not been so particular ...
— Time and Change • John Burroughs
... company with the porter—whose lamentations at our abrupt departure were no doubt sincere as well as politic—and a truck carrying our goods and chattels. As yet, they were modest in number and respectable in appearance. H.C. had not commenced his raid upon the old curiosity shops; had not yet encumbered himself with endless packages, from deal boxes containing old silver, to worm-eaten, fourteenth century carved-wood monks and madonnas, carefully wrapped in brown paper, and bound head, hand and foot (where these essentials were not missing) with ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... reading which many readers are, no doubt, betrayed, we have found nothing which assists the understanding of the stories which they are supposed to illustrate—when we have declared that we have found what is most uncommon passed without notice, and what is most trite and familiar encumbered with comment—we have unpacked our hearts of the bitterness which these volumes have aroused in us, and can now take our leave of them and go on with ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... local exactions, its share of the general German ransom of France, local war expenses, and its share of the general war expenditure. For three years the citizens left their affairs, thus disturbed and encumbered, to be managed by a municipal council trained in the methodical habits of the imperial administration, with the result that in 1874 the expenses of Amiens amounted to 2,479,802 francs, and its revenues to 2,016,130 ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... to his son. But the estate having been burthened with large portions to the daughters, and other debts, it was necessary for the nephew to sell a considerable part of it, and what remained was still much encumbered. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... the work. The climate was severe in winter, the mercury often dropping to 30 deg. below, though we then had no thermometer to measure it, and the summers, at an altitude of two thousand feet, cool and salubrious. The soil was fairly good, though encumbered with the laminated rock and stones of the Catskill formation, which the old ice sheet had broken and shouldered and transported about. About every five or six acres had loose stones and rock enough to put a rock-bottomed wall around it and still leave enough in and on ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... stormy with wind and rain. It was strange to see from my window the whirlpool of ice-encumbered waters. The rain fell in slanting, hissing sheets upon the ice, and the ice, in lumps and sheets and blocks, tossed and heaved and spun. At times it was as though all the ice was driven by some strong movement in ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... gripping hold of one of the clewlines which hung down from the broken yard and swayed about in the wind, preparing to swing himself across the encumbered deck to the port shrouds beyond, where the man was lashed. "I didn't know you were so good a linguist, young Vernon. By Jove, you'll be of more use than I thought you would be when the commander told me to ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... shuts out from travelers all that I was seeing. The lake is called after Mr. Donner, who, with his family, arrived at the Truckee River in the fall of the year, in company with a party of emigrants bound for California. Being encumbered with many cattle, he let the company pass on, and, with his own party of sixteen souls, which included his wife and four children, encamped by the lake. In the morning they found themselves surrounded by an expanse ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... his days and the greater portion of his nights in reading or writing, living in a suite of rooms literally filled with books; the tables, chairs, sofas, and even the floors, being encumbered with them, going out only for a short time in a carriage to get a little air, ...
— The Idler in France • Marguerite Gardiner
... law, at least—sat before them, matured in shape, stiffened in line, exaggerated in traits; disciplined, thought-marked—in a word, older. Elizabeth, encumbered with no recollections as her mother was, regarded him with nothing more than the keen curiosity and interest which the discovery of such unexpected social standing in the long-sought relative naturally begot. He was dressed in an old-fashioned ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... for life is fiercest, and the wealth of nature is greatest, one need hardly say, in tropical climates. There alone do we find every inch of soil 'encumbered by its waste fertility,' as Comus puts it; weighed down by luxuriant growth of tree, shrub, herb, creeper. There alone do lizards lurk in every hole; beetles dwell manifold in every cranny; butterflies flock thick in every grove; bees, ants, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... in the preacher himself. At the beginning of his ministry he may be encumbered with doubts and far from clear in his faith. This is a real obstacle, and the first years of ministerial life may be a time of great perplexity and pain. I suspect our congregations have often a good deal to suffer while we are ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... might inquire at Kirk Michael about the Deemster.. He found the great man's house a desolate place. The gate was padlocked, and he had to clamber over it; the acacias slashed above him going down the path, and the fallen leaves encumbered his feet At the door, which was shut, he rang, and before it was opened to him an old woman put her untidy head out of a little ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... a man of parts, for the use of men of parts. Weak minds will not like it, even though they do not understand it; which is commonly the measure of their admiration. Dull ones will want those minute and uninteresting details with which most other histories are encumbered. He tells me all I want to know, and nothing more. His reflections are short, just, and produce others in his readers. Free from religious, philosophical, political and national prejudices, beyond any historian I ever met with, he relates all those matters as truly and as impartially, ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... away with her all the books, that Lady Davenant might not be tempted to look at them more. As she had several piled on one arm, and had a taper in her hand, she was somewhat encumbered, and, though she managed to open the bed-room door, and to shut it again without letting any of the books fall, and crossed the little ante-room between the bed-chamber and dressing-room safely, yet, as she was opening the dressing-room door, and ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... help for it, but the young man now had two fresh pursuers. At any rate, he was free. It would be to his shame, he thought, if he could not distance two men in heavy cowhide boots, encumbered with cloaks and sabres. So he started down the Rue de la Tombe-Issoire with a lead of some two hundred yards. He saw lights and a crowd and heard music in the Place St. Jacques, and knew ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... all should know who I am and whence I come. To begin, then. Poor! Yes, I have been, and very poor. Eight years ago my father died, and was soon followed by my mother. I was then eighteen, and Bettina nine. We were alone in the world, encumbered with heavy debts and a great lawsuit. My father's last words had been, 'Susie, never, never compromise. Millions, my children, you will have millions.' He embraced us both; soon delirium seized him, and he died repeating, 'Millions; millions!' The next morning a ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... pass that, after a lengthened term of this chivalrous antagonism, the tribe were sorely pressed by the French troops, and could no longer mass its fearless front to face them, but had to flee southward to the desert, and encumbered by its flocks and its women, was hardly driven and greatly decimated. Now among those women was one whom the Sheik held above all earthly things except his honor in war; a beautiful antelope-eyed creature, lithe and ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... difficulty. They now entered the district of Cibao, which is rough and stoney and full of gravel, yet plentifully covered with grass, and watered with several rivers in which gold is found. The farther they went in this country they found it the rougher and more uncouth, and everywhere encumbered with mountains, on the summits even of which they found grains of gold, which is washed down from the tops of these mountains by the great rains and torrents into the beds of the rivers, and there found in small dust, sand, or grains, interspersed with some of a larger size. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. III. • Robert Kerr
... When, encumbered as he was with his awkward armor, he began executing a double shuffle on the beach, the sight was so grotesque that the captain came near going into convulsions. But the exercise was too exhausting, and the mate ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... hostess; I've learned to wait. [Sits. A bachelor at sixty, I found myself Encumbered with a ward—nay, not that— Enriched with female loveliness and grace Bequeathed unto me by a dying friend. Volition had no part in that, nor in My sudden recrudescency of love. I willed our marriage; but 'twas fate bestowed The joys I long had fled. ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... of the Spanish Armada 2000 years later in a similar undertaking, that of trying to avoid an enemy on the sea rather than fight him before carrying out an invasion of the enemy's coast. This ignominious conduct on the part of the Corinthian admiral was partly due to the fact that he was encumbered with his transports, but chiefly to the fact that he knew that in fighting qualities his men were no match for the Athenians. The latter had no peers on the sea at that time. Since Salamis they had progressed far in naval science and efficiency and were filled with the confidence that ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... the critical campaign below Vicksburg: "General Grant did not take with him the trappings and paraphernalia so common to many military men. As all depended on celerity of movement it was important to be encumbered with as little baggage as possible. General Grant took with him neither a horse nor an orderly nor a servant nor a camp-chest nor an overcoat nor a blanket nor even a clean shirt. His entire baggage for six days—I was with him at the time—was ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... can say, "O stronger far than I!" Is it a shame to hide the aching of, A sacred mystery to justify? Through all our spiritual discontents Thrills the strange leaven of renunciation.— Ah! god unknown behind the Sacraments Unfailing of the earthly expiation, Lift up this amethyst-encumbered Vine, Crush from her ...
— The Hours of Fiammetta - A Sonnet Sequence • Rachel Annand Taylor
... this excruciating hour; all his poor adventures, slow striving, progression upward, had been designed to culminate in the mockery of this night. Fate had shaped him to his bitter ending, drawing him on with lure as bright as sunrise. And now, as he walked slowly in the moonlight, feet encumbered by this tragedy, he felt that the essence had been wrung out of life. His golden building was come to confusion, his silver hope would ring its sweet chime in his heart no more. From that hour she would abhor him, and ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... thus completed and placed in its bony case and provided with its muscles, its lids, its tear-ducts, and all its other elaborate and curious appendages, and, a thousand times more wonderful still, without being encumbered with a single superfluous or useless part, can he say that this could be the work of chance? The improbability of this is so great, and consequently the evidence of design is so strong, that he is about to seal his verdict in favor of design, when he opens Mr. Darwin's book. There he finds ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... on Monsieur de Fontaine he was encumbered with a large family. Though it was no part of the noble gentlemen's views to solicit favors, he yielded to his wife's wish, left his country estate, of which the income barely sufficed to maintain ...
— The Ball at Sceaux • Honore de Balzac
... in the midst of an obscurity which even their smugglers' eyes cannot pierce. Stars above hardly shine, so encumbered is the ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... for the nation, my son, and the young men of this Treasury Guard felt that they had a duty to perform in defending the capital, and must perform it with courage. There was one little drawback, however, to their conduct as soldiers; and that was, that each man wanted to go to the front encumbered with a carpet bag, filled with sandwiches and clean shirts. Aside from this, let me say, the guard was got in order for marching, and their gallant commander, Colonel Floyd A. Willett, made a speech, in which he declared there was not a chicken-hearted man in his ranks. And when it marched ...
— Siege of Washington, D.C. • F. Colburn Adams
... after night without even springing it. I knew an old trapper who, on finding himself outwitted in this manner, tied a bit of cheese to the pan, and next morning had poor Reynard by the jaw. The trap is not fastened, but only encumbered with a clog, and is all the more sure in its hold by yielding to every effort of ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... gale, which blew from the northward on the morning of the 23d, caused a great alteration in the appearance of the ice near the ships, but none whatever in that in the offing or at the mouth of the harbour, except that the shores were there more encumbered than before, owing to the quantity of pieces which were separated and driven down from the northward, so that our small boat could not succeed in getting ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... vacated, the lady of the house was huddled under a coverlid about as large as a postage stamp, and did not appear encumbered with much clothing. Three or four others had waked and made some attempt to cover themselves. At least a dozen remained asleep and lay in a charming condition of nudity. The Goldee houses are heated to a high degree, and their inmates sleep without clothing. The delay in admitting us was ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... of his search had in the meantime been plodding homeward on foot, sulky at the loss of his charger, encumbered with his sword, belts, high boots, and uniform, and in his own discomfiture careless whether Anne Garland's life had ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... dispensary doctor. Mr. Burke has only two hundred a year; but if his brother were to die he would be the Marquis of Kilcarney. He'd be a great match then, in point of position; but I hear the estates are terribly encumbered.' ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... notes of unseen birds that were nestling among the tree-tops. After two hours of ascent, the slope of the mountain became more abrupt and decided, the ravines shallower, and the intervening ridges less elevated. The forest, too, became more open, and the trees smaller and less encumbered with vines, and between them we could catch occasional glimpses of the bay, with its waters golden under the slant rays of the declining sun. Finally we came to a kind of terrace or shelf of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... as a collector of old English poetry. He knew, as no one else at that time knew, the value of the plays and pamphlets that encumbered the stalls; he had no competitor to fear 'clad in the invulnerable mail of the purse.' Oldys was born in 1696; he became involved, while quite a young man, in the disaster of the South Sea Bubble; and in 1724 he was obliged to leave London for ...
— The Great Book-Collectors • Charles Isaac Elton and Mary Augusta Elton
... Holkham, Marlborough's building at Blenheim, and many other costly palaces were erected during the following half century. Their owners sometimes built in order to surpass a neighbor in grandeur, and to this day great estates are encumbered by the debts thus incurred in vain show. The heir to such a property was reared in a pomp and luxury undreamed of by the frugal young planter of Virginia. Of working for a livelihood, in the sense in which Washington knew it, the young Englishman ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... of the attractions of the flying coaches, it was still usual for men who enjoyed health and vigour, and who were not encumbered by much baggage, to perform long journeys on horseback. If the traveller wished to move expeditiously he rode post. Fresh saddle horses and guides were to be procured at convenient distances along all the great lines of road. The charge was ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 1 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... Cornwallis destroys all his heavy baggage, and pushes hard after Morgan. The pursuit is urged with unimaginable fury: and Cornwallis gains so fast upon the Americans, encumbered with their prisoners, that on the evening of the ninth day he came up to the banks of the Catawba, just as Morgan's rear had crossed at a deep ford. Before the wished-for morning returned, the river was so swollen by ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... might marry the girl,—postponing his marriage till after his uncle's death. For aught he knew as yet that might still be possible. But were he to do so, he would disgrace his family, and disgrace himself by breaking the solemn promise he had made. And in such case he would be encumbered, and possibly be put beyond the pale of that sort of life which should be his as Earl of Scroope, by having Captain O'Hara as his father-in-law. He was aware now that he would be held by all his natural friends to have ruined ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... a great pace, Cupid (who was much less encumbered with clothes than the other two) showing a lead. Presently they lost sight of the top, and through the clouds below caught a distant glimpse of ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... encumbered with a wife on the spot, desired to make his everlasting fortune, retire from the painting of pictures and the making of books, and grub in the field of science and ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... the doings of the farmer through the chinks of the partition which separated her room from the passage, concocted the story which convicted the prisoners. Pearce thinking himself pursued, too heavily encumbered for rapid flight, left the portmanteau as described, intending to call for it in the morning, if his fears proved groundless. He, however, had not courage to risk calling again, and made the best of his way to ...
— The Experiences of a Barrister, and Confessions of an Attorney • Samuel Warren
... lips the imaginings of his mind shaped into articulate air; they grew more definite and distinct as he uttered them; they came by the very act to have more of reality, to be more tangible. He shakes off the ill-assorted companion that only encumbered him, and springs away in his race, more light of heart, and with a step ...
— Thoughts on Man - His Nature, Productions and Discoveries, Interspersed with - Some Particulars Respecting the Author • William Godwin
... weeks on the ground beneath the hardening influence of a temperature several degrees below zero, evolved into a surface upon which a constant steady balance demanded no little skill. Marching encumbered with a full pack, clumsy Army-shod feet, one arm only free for a much hampered swing, increased the difficulties ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... on this very subject, the store-keepers being most pointedly directed to give the preference to the man whose grain was the produce of his own labour; and if any favour were shown, to let it be to the poor but industrious settler who might be encumbered with a large family. But these necessary and humane directions had been too often frustrated by circumstances which were carefully kept from the knowledge of the governor; it was, however, proved to him, that on occasion ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... the rights of all generations of men, and cannot be monopolised by any. That which is worth following, will be followed for the sake of its worth, and it is in this that its security lies, and not in any conditions with which it may be encumbered. When a man leaves property to his heirs, he does not connect it with an obligation that they shall accept it. Why, then, should we do otherwise with respect to constitutions? The best constitution that could now be devised, consistent with the condition of the present moment, may be far short ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... spot where a great deal of broken rock encumbered the ground, Kenkenes unslung his wallet and tested the fragments with chisel and mallet. It was the same as the quarry product—magnesium limestone, white, fine, close-grained and easily worked. But it was broken ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... his great theme, to such an extent as to alarm the neophyte at the very threshold of the temple of astronomy, he has with a wise judgment selected from the best works, including the latest, those parts that were least encumbered with the abstruse and the unintelligible; and the illustrations serve to make his ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... absurd riches encumbered 170 me! I dared not lay claim to above half my possessions. Let me but once unbosom ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... moved on. Some were left at the encampments; others lay down by the road-sides, in the midst of the day's march, wherever their waning strength finally failed them; and every where broken chariots, dead and dying beasts of burden, and the bodies of soldiers, that lay neglected where they fell, encumbered and choked the way. In a word, all the roads leading toward the northern provinces exhibited in full perfection those awful scenes which usually mark the track of a great army retreating from ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... not been for that, the small body of men might possibly have cut their way through the cavalry; but even then they would be so hotly pursued that the most of them would assuredly be hunted down. But encumbered by the women such an enterprise seemed utterly hopeless, and the whole of the ...
— Rujub, the Juggler • G. A. Henty
... softly to the object of plunder. Lucky chance! the cover was off, and the first thing his hand touched was a knife plunged to the hilt in a large loaf. This he captured and deposited in his bag. Then followed pies, tarts, etc., and last a small jar, which he took under his arm, and, thus encumbered, crept on all-fours to the kitchen door, where Jenny relieved him of the jar. They softly ascended the stairs, where Amy was ready to ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... mere wagon-track through the trees, and it being but little travelled, and encumbered with the roots and stumps of the pine, our progress was slow, and we were nearly two hours in reaching the ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... from a different quarter, as the astonished Baris in their hasty retreat stumbled over the next ambuscade. I now saw a native running like a deer, but chased like a good deerhound by one of the "Forty Thieves." The native was so hard pressed by this good runner, who was encumbered with clothes, rifle, and ammunition, that he had been obliged to throw away his bow and arrows, together with his lance. He now gained upon the soldier slightly, but they were not five paces apart when they disappeared in the high dhurra. That soldier was Ali Nedjar, of the "Forty Thieves," ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... is further voted and resolved, that every slave, so enlisting, shall, upon his passing muster before Col. Christopher Greene, be immediately discharged from the service of his master or mistress, and be absolutely FREE, as though he had never been encumbered with any kind of ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... October the Landers passed the mouth of the Coudonia, which Richard had crossed near Cuttup on his first expedition, and a little later they came in sight of Egga. The landing-place was soon reached by way of a bay encumbered with an immense number of large and heavy canoes full of merchandise, with the prows daubed with blood, and covered with feathers, as charms ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... this night excursion into the hill fastnesses, where at any moment, as it seemed to him, they might miss their way. After all, they were but twelve men all told, and he accounted it a stupid thing to attempt to take a short cut across the hills for the purpose of overtaking an encumbered troop that must of necessity be moving at a very much slower pace. This was the way not to overtake but to outdistance. Yet since it was not for him to remonstrate with the lieutenant, he kept his peace and hoped ...
— The Snare • Rafael Sabatini
... neve lies a glacier, on, in, and under which the water runs in a thousand little streams, eventually emerging at the end, in some cases forming a beautiful blue cavern, though in others the end of the glacier is encumbered and concealed ...
— The Beauties of Nature - and the Wonders of the World We Live In • Sir John Lubbock
... most venerable traditions are being shaken. It is a time of hope, but a time of danger too. All sorts of plans are being formed for breaking down the partition walls that divide man from man, and class from class, and nation from nation; there is only one plan that will not leave the ground encumbered by ruins. ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... else, and this he judged could not be the case, if there were not land of considerable extent to the south. However, the greatest part of this southern continent, if it actually exists, must lie within the polar circle, where the sea is so encumbered with ice, that the land is rendered inaccessible. So great is the risk which is run, in examining a coast in these unknown and icy seas, that our commander, with a modest and well grounded boldness, ...
— Narrative of the Voyages Round The World, • A. Kippis
... unpaid; he has three sons of his own, and not a blessed stiver to leave between them. How could he, poor dear idiot? Agricultural depression; a splendid pauper. He has only the estate, and that's in Essex; land going begging; worth nothing a year, encumbered up to the eyes, and loaded with first rent-charges, jointures, settlements. Money, indeed! poor Kynaston! It's my brother Marmaduke's I mean; lucky dog, he went in for speculation—began life as a guinea-pig, and rose with ...
— Miss Cayley's Adventures • Grant Allen
... yet accepting the least; inviting my poor service, and yet, above all, content with my poorer love. Let us try to realize this, whatsoever, wheresoever we be. The humblest and the simplest, the weakest and the most encumbered, may love Him not less than the busiest and strongest, the most gifted and laborious. If our heart be clear before Him; if He be to us our chief and sovereign choice, dear above all, and beyond all desired; then all else matters little. That which concerneth us He will ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... and children. They had much valuable property with them. The stony desert, which stretches unbroken from the Euphrates to the uplands on the east of Jordan, was infested then as now by wild bands of marauders, who might easily swoop down on the encumbered march of Ezra and his men, and make a clean sweep of all which they had. And he knew that he had but to ask and have an escort from the king that would ensure their safety till they saw Jerusalem. Artaxerxes' surname, 'the long-handed,' may have described a physical ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... Ontario, over which the ice was deep and remained for a long time, the amount of erosion is singularly small. Thus north of Kingston the little valleys in the limestone rocks which were cut by the preglacial streams, though somewhat encumbered with drift, remain almost as distinct as they are on similar strata in central Kentucky, well south of the field which the ice occupied. In fact, the ice sheet appears to have done the greatest part of its work and to have affected the surface ...
— Outlines of the Earth's History - A Popular Study in Physiography • Nathaniel Southgate Shaler
... conditions of his empire he was constitutionally unable to form a conception. He was a disciple, not of Machiavelli, but of Rousseau; and his scattered dominions, divided by innumerable divergences of racial and class prejudice, and encumbered with traditional institutions to which the people clung with passionate conservatism, he regarded as so much vacant territory on which to build up his ideal state. He was, in fact, a Revolutionist who happened also to be an emperor. "Reason" and "enlightenment" ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... the woodman, the timber of Minnesota grows in the valleys of her great rivers and upon the banks of their numerous tributaries. It is thus easily shipped to a distant market; while the great body of the land, not encumbered with it, but naked, is ready for the plough and for the seed. Most of the timber which grows in the region below this point is hard wood, such as elm, ...
— Minnesota and Dacotah • C.C. Andrews
... my Lord.—Your father left his estate encumbered; it is not yet clear; you are of age, my Lord: pray, spare yourself the trouble of consulting me, if you do ...
— Barford Abbey • Susannah Minific Gunning
... and are higher and more rocky. Numerous dwellings cut in the rocky face of the hills remind one of the same appearance on the borders of the Loire; but in no other respect can the clay-coloured river claim resemblance with that crystal though sand-encumbered stream. Several bold rocks diversify the prospect here,—one called the Roque-de-Tau, and ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... to say which of Lady Cumnor's two hearers was the most dismayed at the idea which had taken possession of her. Mrs. Kirkpatrick had no fancy for being encumbered with a step-daughter before her time. If Molly came to be an inmate of her house, farewell to many little background economies, and a still more serious farewell to many little indulgences, that were innocent ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... who was chiefly remarkable for his strong passion for music, in which science he acquired no slight celebrity as a composer, died in 1781, leaving his property very much encumbered. Its management was entrusted to Lady Mornington, who appears, by universal assent, to have been one of those remarkable women to whose care the world is indebted, so much more than it conceives ...
— Maxims And Opinions Of Field-Marshal His Grace The Duke Of Wellington, Selected From His Writings And Speeches During A Public Life Of More Than Half A Century • Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
... the Parliamentary position, progress with any large measures of reform was, however, difficult even in the preliminary stages; and the road seemed to get more encumbered every day, for the period now under review indicates the high-water mark of Parliamentary obstruction in the skilled hands of the Irish Party and Lord Randolph Churchill, who successfully defied the feeble reforms of procedure of 1882. So it came about that early in 1884 ...
— The Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Charles W. Dilke, Vol. 2 • Stephen Gwynn
... religious provision for both his Protestant and Catholic settlers, yet think of the unexampled ferocity with which he was attacked upon his return to Upper Canada, in law suits, and illegal processes, so that his estates became heavily encumbered, so that he went to France to pine away and die. The world failed to see any glamour in him, and carelessly said, what does it profit? ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... the good people for their intended hospitality, and return home. We first halted before an ancient square building, the outside of which has been much encroached upon by the alluvial earth of ages, and the simple but correct Tuscan portico, encumbered with piles of fagots for the village use during the approaching winter. The three doorways of the facade were embellished by sculptured wreaths of vine leaves and grapes. Hearing that some Hebrew ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... reached the south avenue, but had not proceeded far when it became evident, from the lights at the windows, as well as from the shouts and other noises proceeding from the court, that their flight was discovered. Encumbered as he was by his lovely burden, Leonard ran on so swiftly, that Nizza Macascree and Blaize could scarcely keep up with him. They found John Lutcombe at the end of the avenue with the horses, and mounting them, set off along the downs, accompanied by the keeper, who acted as their guide. Striking ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... involved in too much obscurity to enable us to speak very decidedly in favour of any theory. But, in order to avoid perplexing you with different explanations, I shall confine myself to one which appears to me to be least encumbered with difficulties, and most likely ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... large shirt naturally costs more than a small one. So Jerry, as he walked along the Bowery, assumed a jaunty air, precisely such as some of my readers may when they have a new suit to display. His new shirt was quite conspicuous, since he was encumbered neither ...
— Paul the Peddler - The Fortunes of a Young Street Merchant • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... received the rents. The important business of being a landowner is the only one for which no special training is provided. Many of the landlords, however, then, as now, were unable to improve their estates if they desired to do so, as they were hopelessly encumbered, and the expense of sale was almost prohibitive. The contrast between good and bad farmers was more marked in 1850 than to-day, the efforts of the Royal Agricultural Society to raise the general standard of farming had not yet ...
— A Short History of English Agriculture • W. H. R. Curtler
... nothing! The only fear were if we fled together, For that would make our ties beyond all doubt. The waters only lie in flood between This burgh and Frankfort: so far's in our favour The route on to Bohemia, though encumbered, Is not impassable; and when you gain A few hours' start, the difficulties will be The same to your pursuers. Once beyond 200 The ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... past unnecessary toil, fastened a red bandana to the top of a dead snag to show me where to come up on my way out. Then I carefully strapped my canteen and camera on my back, made doubly secure my revolver, put on my heavy gloves, and started down. And I realized at once that only so lightly encumbered should I have ever ventured ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... is black mould with a mixture of fine white sand and is very rich. The trees are lofty and large, and the underwood grows so close together that in many places it is impassable. The east side of the bay is a rich loamy soil; but near the tops of the hills is very much encumbered with stones and rocks: the underwood thinly placed and small. The trees on the south, south-east, and south-west sides of the hills grow to a larger size than those that are exposed to the opposite points; for the sides of the ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... Saxon churl Our land encumbered hath; Arise my Prince, my Earl, And brush them from thy path: Rise, mighty Smith, and sveep 'em vith The ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wealth and station. He had no doubt risen to an office of dignity in his own Church—he was a bishop. But to understand the position of a Scottish bishop in those days, one must figure Parson Adams, no richer than Fielding has described him, yet encumbered by a title ever associated with wealth and dignity, and only calculated, when allied with so much poverty and social humility, to deepen the incongruity of his lot, and throw him more than ever on the mercy of the scorner. The office was indeed conspicuous, not by its dignities or emoluments, ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... fight, being encumbered with a train of baggage-wagons and bathorses, which with his troops made a line on the highroad twelve miles long. It being evident that the Americans intended to give battle, he encamped in a strong ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... went to the usurer's house. The lofty court-yard, dogs, iron doors and locks, arched windows, coffers, draped with strange covers, and, last of all, the remarkable owner himself, seated motionless before him, all produced a strange impression on him. The windows seemed intentionally so encumbered below that they admitted the light only from the top. 'Devil take him, how well his face is lighted!' he said to himself, and began to paint assiduously, as though afraid that the favourable light would disappear. 'What power!' he repeated to himself. 'If ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... be transported through a trail of the forest, encumbered with snow, around the falls, a distance of about twenty miles, on the shoulders of men. The Indians, with fraternal kindness, aided in these herculean labors, and were amply repaid for days of toil, by a knife, a hatchet, or a few trinkets, ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... of the beds of limestone and quartz indicates the direction of the running streams, and these naturally flow into the valleys and plains, and the land, being well watered, is more fertile; consequently it was soonest cleared by the settlers, while the higher ground surrounding it is still encumbered by timber growth. An army naturally desires open ground for its operations, for large bodies of cavalry and artillery cannot deploy to advantage through wooded districts. Therefore, if we follow this roadway, which, as you see, slightly descends to the northeast, we shall soon come within ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... all this, that some such opinion as this should be entertained by genuine philosophers, so that they should speak among themselves as follows: 'A by-path, as it were, seems to lead us on in our researches undertaken by reason,' because as long as we are encumbered with the body, and our soul is contaminated with such an evil, we can never fully attain to what we desire; and this, we say, is truth. For the body subjects us to innumerable hinderances on account of its necessary support, and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... is that man who, while encumbered with a sinful body, can truly say, "I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." In Him all the commandments are obeyed-all my sins washed away by His blood-and my soul clothed with righteousness and immortality. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... porters at the station, dirty streets encumbered by hawkers and their wares, strings of pitiful beggars shaking their hands and exposing mortified limbs—can this be Berlin, Berlin the prim, the orderly, the clean? Something has happened here in seven years, ...
— Europe—Whither Bound? - Being Letters of Travel from the Capitals of Europe in the Year 1921 • Stephen Graham
... traced the Beaver Kill to its source, and encamped by Balsam Lake. A cold and protracted rainstorm coming on, we were obliged to leave the woods before we were ready. Neither of us will soon forget that tramp by an unknown route over the mountains, encumbered as we were with a hundred and one superfluities which we had foolishly brought along to solace ourselves with in the woods; nor that halt on the summit, where we cooked and ate our fish in the drizzling rain; nor, again, that rude log house, with its sweet hospitality, ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... lay out streets, alleys, parks, and other public grounds; to grade, improve, or discontinue them; to make, repair, improve, or discontinue sidewalks, and to prevent their being encumbered with merchandise, snow or other obstructions; to regulate driving on the streets; ...
— Studies in Civics • James T. McCleary
... difficulty overcome without effect. 60 Translation of poetry into poetry is difficult, because the Translator must give a brilliancy to his language without that warmth of original conception, from which such brilliancy would follow of its own accord. But the translator of a living Author is encumbered with additional inconveniences. If he render his 65 original faithfully, as to the sense of each passage, he must necessarily destroy a considerable portion of the spirit; if he endeavour to give ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... Viscount Harbinger was, at the age of thirty-one, perhaps the least encumbered peer in the United Kingdom. Thanks to an ancestor who had acquired land, and departed this life one hundred and thirty years before the town of Nettlefold was built on a small portion of it, and to a father who had died in his son's infancy, after judiciously selling the said town, he possessed ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... lady, report affirmed at the time, Major Scott received a fortune of 60,000l. The estate of Abbotsford was also settled by Sir Walter upon the young pair; but, as the owner is stated not to have been at this time in a state of solvency, though he thought himself so, and his estate now proves to be encumbered with heavy debts, the deed of entail, of course, becomes invalid, and the paternal property must be sold by the creditors of the estate. There is, however, ample reason to hope that such a step will be averted, by the gratitude of the public, and that Abbotsford will be preserved for the family. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... finest transparent ice I ever saw. This afforded an agreeable sight enough to the eye, but conveyed to the mind an idea of coldness, much greater than it really was; for the weather was rather milder then it had been for some time past, and the sea less encumbered with ice. But the worst was, the ice so clogged the rigging, sails, and blocks, as to make them exceedingly bad to handle. Our people, however, surmounted those difficulties with a steady perseverance, and withstood this intense cold ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... turning his back on his enemies, now in full cry close behind him, Schenk sprang into the last remaining boat just pushing from the quay. Already overladen, it foundered with his additional weight, and Martin Schenk, encumbered with his heavy armor, sank at once to ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... hors du combat, turned toward the spot where he had thrown Nadia's body. He saw that she was unharmed, and sprang toward her in relief. He was surprised beyond measure, however, to see her run away at a pace he could not hope to equal, encumbered as he was; motioning frantically at him the while to keep away from her. He stopped, astounded, and started to unscrew his helmet, whereupon she dashed back toward him, signaling him emphatically to leave ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... Philadelphia was evacuated;[6] and, by two in the afternoon, all the British troops were encamped on the Jersey shore, from Cooper's Creek to Red Bank. Although they availed themselves to a great extent of the transportation by water, yet their line of march was so lengthened and encumbered by baggage, and the weather was so intensely hot, that they were under the necessity of proceeding slowly. Indeed their movements wore the appearance of purposed delay; and were calculated to favour the opinion that Sir Henry Clinton was willing to be overtaken, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 3 (of 5) • John Marshall
... are almost amusing. Imagine Rye with the pretty alleys so encumbered and piled up with roofs, sofas, the contents of wardrobes, dormer-windows, smashed mirrors, rubble, and dust, that it's quite impossible to proceed. Very well, ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... in the early morning of the following day, bringing with us the cattle and our wounded. Thus encumbered it was a most toilsome march, and an anxious one also, for it was always possible that the remnant of the Amakoba might attempt pursuit. This, however, they did not do, for very many of them were ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard |
